


the sticks

by katyacore



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Man trixie. Woman katya, but like with a purpose, katyas a russian milf but 4 a bear, minor blood, trixie is a folk punk singer, yes it’s straight and that’s my right as a lesbian...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 02:31:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17194820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katyacore/pseuds/katyacore
Summary: "If she wanted to hurt me, she would have, and if she does… Well, that will be how it goes.” She smiled down at Brian, and he smiled back somehow.(brian is a musician on a retreat. katya is a russian mountain woman with a pet bear)





	the sticks

**Author's Note:**

  * For [embroidered](https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroidered/gifts).



> hi!!! this is an idea that i had and just like. couldn't believe the genius so i had to write it... idk how long itll be and if any of you have read my other fic, don't worry! thats not being abandoned. but i hope you all like this !
> 
> also, like, as a disclaimer, i don't encourage people to have wild animals as pets. that is a Bad Bad idea. but this is fiction and not to be taken seriously. enjoy the milf and her pet bear!

_ THE ROOM WAS FREEZING COLD.  _ Brian had expected nothing less, yet he still felt his entire body jerk uncomfortably as he entered the cabin; he was a menial thing under its grandiose ceiling that seemed to span endlessly above him, creating its own atmosphere. Wooden beams with hard knots and grooves supported  the whole thing. Brian removed the mitten on his left hand with his teeth and brushed it against the wood of the doorframe, sort of expecting splinters, but none came. Just dull, over polished, and unnatural smoothness touched his fingers and palm. 

 

And the cold. It was so cold. His skin crawled and screamed for the Los Angeles sunshine, and he had to rub down the goosebumps to get it to shut up. 

 

He was a little boy back in the deep woods of Wisconsin, back in his old, decrepit home, back in his snug fleece trapper hats and too-small mittens—but he wasn’t. He was the furthest from Wisconsin he’d ever been. Brian was deep in the Russian wilderness, which felt like the most desolate place in the entire world. It was weirdly pure, and as Brian had driven his rental jeep plowed into four-wheel drive through the mountains, he was steadily sure that nobody had actually set foot in the area. The cabin—furnished and generously given hot water and electricity—had just appeared there one day, and the man on Airbnb who was renting it to him was surely just a middleman. 

 

Just before Brian began considering if he was the last man on  _ earth,  _ his phone pinged. The cabin also had wifi (though, if Brian was going to do what he intended to get done, he was going to turn it off). He quickly shut the door behind him and ignored the suitcases he had been bringing in to sit down on the couch, huffing and digging through his pocket for his cell. It was a text from Shea. 

 

_ Did you land? Pls tell me you weren’t eaten by a bear _

 

He smiled, grateful for the half-joking concern. Shea was one of the only people he’d told about his spur of the moment vacation, and he figured as a fellow musician she would understand. She did, but the fact he chose the snowy mountains of Siberia of all places was, “disconcerting and the sign of a mid-life crisis.” Brian was now inclined to agree. 

 

_ I just got to the place I rented out . Fucking spooky, girl  _

 

_ I bet!! But now you can be a hot down and dirty wilderness man. _

 

Brian opened Twitter without thinking; it was a reflex at that point. Open the app, scroll for a minute, check if he had been verified yet (Christ, you’d think 25K followers and a Spotify verification would be enough!), and maybe make a snappy tweet. The cycle was endless, and he couldn’t wait for it to end. Someone had replied to the tweet announcing his hiatus in, what he hoped, was the least pretentious way possible to make such an announcement. He decided not to check what the reply was and instead exited the app,  then deleted it. He sighed, tossed his phone across the coffee table and onto an armchair, and brought his forearm to cover his eyes.

 

—

 

Brian didn’t notice his fingers were bleeding until a droplet hit his face. He opened his eyes, his eyelids sticking together heavily for a moment, and finally looked down at his guitar. A few small spatters of red were splashed onto the pale yellow ash. His right thumb was steadily dribbling, and his ring finger was similarly damaged. His eyes traveled directly in front of him, where a few more drops had landed onto the wood of his bedroom wall. 

 

“Son of a bitch,” Brian groaned, and stuck his thumb in his mouth. Brian did not use guitar picks (only thumb picks when he was playing his autoharp, and even that was rare) and as one of the minority of musicians whose forté was folk-punk, his strumming was quite frantic. His hand was always a blur, all four fingers swinging down onto his strings with a harsh but pleasant  _ THWACK!  _ before his thumb upstroked in a crazy, twitching motion. But he was practiced, deft with his strokes that seemed erratic and unexpected but were actually very purposeful; he hadn’t bled strumming in years. 

 

Brian knuckled the blood on his cheek absently while he continued nursing his bleeding digits. He was more concerned about cleaning the guitar than he was with his injuries. His left fingertips had been screaming under their thick calluses, which Brian had already ripped and built up again. He set down the instrument and leaned it against his bed with a sigh, standing up with achy knees to gather a washcloth from the upstairs bathroom. He realized that if he tried to clean with his hand still bleeding, he’d just dirty everything all over again, and crouched down to grab the first aid kit underneath the sink. 

 

Brian used to bleed after every concert he went to as a teenager, but not because he was the one playing. He was extremely punk, so much so that it made his family nauseous. He snuck into local concerts with boyfriends and girlfriends he met on Myspace or at skate shops, and got the shit beat out of him in mosh pits. It felt good, they were some of his best years, but he was much happier being the one playing at those local concerts for moshing teenagers than getting his own teeth chipped. He was surprised by just how much he handled when he was younger; his body already wouldn’t be able to take all those beatings at the tender age of thirty. Some of the performers he would play the same venue with or open for were even older, and they had to slow their strumming or bass playing or headbanging by considerable amounts due to the bitch that was old age and irresponsibility. Brian did not care to let present mistakes in taking care of his body get their dues later down the line, so he took utmost care of himself—physically, at least. 

 

After cleaning his slit cuticles with a disinfectant wipe, Brian wrapped them up in bandages and examined his handiwork under the grimy yellow light of the bathroom.  _ Not so bad, Doc. I think the patient will make a swift recovery.  _

 

Swift, but not swift enough for Brian’s liking. He had been working on music for three days straight, from the moment he had unpacked his guitar, but he still felt like he had gotten nowhere. The lyrics were carbon copies of things he had already written, and he was starting to feel that even those were carbon copies of other people’s music (“A Modest Mouse knockoff who looked to Dolly Parton as a mother figure,” one critic had said of him in 2012). The melody was always wrong, the vocals wouldn’t match the vibe, et-fucking-cetera. Brian wanted to take his guitar by the neck and strangle it, demand it to make the music that it had made before, but the instrument wouldn’t budge. 

 

_ It will,  _ he reminded himself, lovingly wiping his blood away from the guitar, coaxing it to forgive him.  _ It’s gotta.  _ He would have a breakthrough inspiration whether they—his brain, his guitar, his critics—liked it or not. 

 

He padded down the stairs, humming one of the melodies he had been trying out, thumping his knuckles on the wall as he went. He was suddenly disgusted by it, by this earworm, and rapped his fist on the wood particularly hard to get it to stop. His musical mind retreated, blissfully, but who knew for how long? God, he wanted his phone… 

 

But he didn’t go get it. It was in the rank attic, which Brian had seen infested with spiders on his first trip to put it there in the first place. This was good enough of a reason to keep him away. He instead reached for his beanie, scarf, and snow pants. The air was clear and sunny, and the hard snow and winds from yesterday had laid a fresh powder down, which sparkled and gleaned invitingly from the window. Brian also made a mental note to take his snowshoes, just in case, and a thermos filled with warm milk (he was trying to ration his hot cocoa supply). 

 

He ended up looking like quite the adventurer for just a simple stroll, his entire body covered head to toe in multiple layers, only his eyes and nose poking out before a cloth shrouded the rest of his face. His bandaged hands were throbbing gently under gloves. He licked his cracked lips and started along a path through the woods, marked by neon tape on the trees, and refused to deviate from it. 

 

He used to play in the woods behind his house in Wisconsin almost every day. When he was little, he would take his little dog not-so-originally named Pup and his guitar with him to a small fort he had discovered next to a sloping hill. A huge oak tree had grown on it sideways, its gnarled branches the width of his entire body working as ladder rungs of sorts until you reached a plateau. He went steadily less as the years went on, except to bring friends and smoke weed under its sweeping canopy. When Pup died, an eighteen year old Brian was reduced back to a five year old. He had picked Pup up and swaddled him in an old (but comfortable) blanket, walked silently back to the tree, and buried him in the snow underneath it. And then he sat and cried until his face chapped and peeled before going home. His parents did not notice Pup was dead until three days later. 

 

Brian would have used this sudden, painful memory as inspiration, if he had not already done so years ago. One of his best works was about poor old Pup and that big oak tree, but writing it had not been tragic or very painful. He did it in one night, sitting in his empty bathtub wearing only boxers and tipsy off of box wine. 

 

_ Very dignified of you,  _ he thought, sipping his warm milk.  _ Those were the days, man. Those days were the fuckin’ tits.  _

 

Something rudely broke his concentration. A large snapping sound that seemed to echo around him. Brian glanced down and lifted both of his boots, one after the other.  _ Did I step on a stick—? _

 

_ THWUMP!  _

 

No longer a cracking sound, but a sound for sure. It was like something heavy landing in the snow. Most likely, Brian realized, a pile of snow sitting on a branch had finally weighed too heavy, snapping the wood and sending the snow falling to the floor like a sack of bricks. They were the sounds of a forest during winter, which Brian knew well. Completely natural, even boring. 

 

But the screams were not. 

 

Somebody started screaming. Somebody— _ A woman?— _ was shrieking at what seemed like the top of their lungs. More loud, heavy sounds, punctuated by howls and sobs. Brian’s entire body seemed to taze; he actually gripped his shirt in front of his heart. His mouth fell open automatically. His feet wouldn’t move. 

 

_ (what the fuck what the fuck what the FUCK) _

 

There was a more guttural noise, and Trixie thought sickly that it sounded like someone gurgling or choking, but then another shriek came, bright and clear. Brian was running. He was running off the path, away from his cabin, or safety, at top speeds. His lack of fitness was somehow ignored or overpowered by his brain—he hadn’t run like that in years. 

 

He paused at a large pine tree when the noises quieted and strained his ears. Birds twittered noisily, and he wanted to hurl a rock at them to get them to shut up. Another few sobs came again, clear as day, and Brian sprinted to his left. They were getting louder, and Brian knew he was close. 

 

After a few more moments, Brian spotted a clearing absent of trees ahead of him. Somehow, he began running even faster, lungs screaming for air, his hamstrings pulling and pushing uncomfortably, boots sending white powder up into his own face as he slammed them down. He was at the edge of the forest, they were so fucking close—

 

The toe of his boot hooked onto a low hanging branch and catapulted him through the air. Brian felt his ankle twist unnaturally, screamed, and tried to flail his hands to make for a softer impact. It was not much use. He fell headfirst into the powdery snow, and his body sank through into the hard, frozen ground. His skull knocked against the ground as well, but it at least had a small amount of cushion. 

 

He laid there for a moment, holding his breath, dazed, before finally drawing his elbows up into the air and peeling his torso off of the ground. One glove slipped on the icy grass and he almost fell again, but he managed to brace himself, lopsided, on his forearm. Another scream rang out, and Brian’s blood turned to ice. He could feel himself shaking as he forced himself to his knees. 

 

There was a woman fifty or so yards in front of him. She was on her belly, it seemed, because he could only see her bright blonde ponytail and the back of her red coat against the snow. Her hands suddenly flashed in front of her and she was army crawling, dragging herself through the snow with her hands shoveling the powder behind her like she was swimming. 

 

Brian’s first attempt at a call was fruitless, only a harsh whisper. He cleared his throat and cried, “Hey! Hey!” 

 

The woman’s head shot up, but he couldn’t see her expression. He began waving his arms, for no apparent reason other than making sure she could see him, that this was  _ real _ . 

 

Just when he became convinced everything was really happening, something huge and brown shot out of the woods across from him and back into the clearing. It snuffled and coughed triumphantly, loping awkwardly towards the woman—towards him. 

 

Brian shouted in spite of himself. He had seen bears in movies, on T.V, brochures, the internet, but they never looked this big. They seemed to always be dog-sized, or as big as a deer at  _ most— _ But this thing looked like it could give an SUV a run for its money. Even from so far away, Brian could see its paws were the size of his  _ head.  _

 

The woman cried out as the bear came directly behind her and stood up on hind legs. Its enormous head seemed to scrape the treetops, and its torso was as wide and solid as their trunks. It had to be at least eight feet tall. It reeled back as the woman rolled onto her back and held her arms out. 

 

_ “No!”  _ Brian screamed helplessly, but the animal suddenly came down on her, its paws sending white, powdery snow into a shimmering arc around them. He lowered his head and tossed it about for a moment. Brian scrambled in an attempt to get to his feet and start running, but his ankle stubbornly refused by sending a shot of pain through his entire leg. He cried out again, and the bear stopped. It sat back on its haunches, bored, huffing so hard the cold air billowed out from his muzzle. It commanded a terrible sort of awe. 

 

Then it looked at Brian, and Brian fainted. 

 

—

 

Brian swam in and out of consciousness, never fully waking, always feeling a heavy blanket over his entire body and mind. The ground moved and pulsed underneath him, all of the air was breathing in time with him, someone was singing,

 

_ skip to m’lou skip to m’lou come on Pup come on let’s sing a song sing it for the people they’re so hungry they’re so damn hungry _

 

or at least speaking in a melodic way. He was hurting, thought he felt someone throwing stones 

 

_ kill two birds with one stone come on sing the song and feed the people _

 

onto his aching body. It was freezing. 

 

—

 

When Brian finally did wake, he was quite surprised and pleased to realize it was not at The Pearly Gates. He was on a couch with a pillow underneath his head and at least three afghans piled on top of him. He brought his hand from under the blankets to rub the sleep from his face and found that most of his layers of clothes had been stripped of him—he was only in his pullover sweater and sweatpants. 

 

Confused and dazed, he forgot why he was there for a moment, and then he remembered the bear. He gasped and sat up quickly, running his hands all over his chest, cupping his chin and throat. Somebody else in the room gasped and said something he could not understand. 

 

Groggily, heart beating fast, Brian blinked and turned to look over the back of the couch. Behind him was a counter, and beyond that, a small kitchen, where a short woman was busying herself at the stove. She had a plain brown shawl lined with fur draped across her shoulders, and he could see that her blonde hair was choppy and improperly layered. She looked over her shoulder and flashed an impossibly white smile that looked more like she was baring her teeth, then spoke again. 

 

Brian realized she was speaking Russian and wanted to smack himself for not taking more time to study the language. He had started on one of those language learning apps a month or so before the trip, and he hadn’t made it very far before giving up. He knew she had said  _ kofe  _ (as in,  _ “Privet, ya khotel by zakazat kofe,”  _ I would like to order a coffee, one of the only sentences Brian had memorized), but the rest was completely lost. She grabbed two mugs and walked around the counter, back towards the couch. 

 

She was chatting quickly, her voice chipper as she tossed her head back to get her hair out of her face and sat down on the edge of the couch. She was careful not to brush against Brian’s ankle, which he was starting to feel throb dully. She laughed at something she had said, kicking her legs out with apparently no regard for the coffee cups in her hand. Her bangs, though uneven, were starting to grow over her eyebrows, and red and gold crystals dangled from her earlobes. She looked expectantly at brian, red lips drawn up like a bow. 

 

“I…” Brian began, then cleared his throat.  _ “Ya ne,  _ uh,  _ govoryu po… russki.”  _ He had hoped he just told her he didn’t speak Russian. 

 

She furrowed her eyebrows, watching him intensely as he spoke, and then a smile lit up her face once again. 

 

“Ah!” she cried. “I should have known. You did not look good in snow, man. And you did not have a gun!  _ Da,  _ no Serbian for sure.” Brian grinned and blew out a sigh of relief, thanking her as she handed him his mug of coffee and refraining from telling her he was actually trying to cut out caffeine. He touched the hot ceramic gingerly and began to blow on it. 

 

“I’m Katya,” the woman said after sipping her own coffee. Her accent was incredibly thick, but endearing, and her english turned out to be quite good. “You are in my house. I took you here when I saw you pass out. Good God, I thought maybe you had died. But you were breathing, I could see.”

 

Brian sputtered into his coffee suddenly. Katya’s eyes widened and she jumped a bit before rushing to clamp her hands over Brian’s on the mug and pull it from his lips, eyebrows knitted with worry. He coughed and wiped his mouth, shaking his head in bewilderment. She was the woman in the snow, crawling away before the bear—

 

“Attacked you!” Brian cried, blinking. “The… The bear! I saw it attack you, oh my God—“

 

Katya cut him off with a barking laugh, grabbing a handkerchief (from a pocket she seemed to have sewn into her harem yoga pants herself) and dabbed at his lips. 

 

“Oh, no, you are mistaken—what’s your name?”

 

“Brian.”

 

“You are mistaken, Brian. That was Sofiya!” 

 

She smiled big again, showing off every one of her straight teeth as Brian stared slack jawed back at her.  _ This woman is crazy.  _

“Oh, I am so terribly sorry she scared you,” Katya continued, patting his tummy with her strong, work-roughened hand. “I know that it seems strange, but she is my pet and housemate!  _ Net,  _ it does not make sense, I know. It is a long story which I don’t care to tell right now, but you will know.”

 

Brian was blushing from his neck to the top of his ears. He felt extremely silly about how he had acted—sprinting through the forests like a crazy person, face-planting into the snow, and then screaming and fainting like a delicate victorian woman. It was a wonder and miracle he hadn’t pissed himself. “Is she…?”

 

“Dangerous?” Katya finished, taking another drink from her mug. “Oh, yes. You must never forget she is a wild animal, and she weighs as much as a truck! But she has no claws—not my doing, of course.” She looked stormily off into the distance, her lips pulling into a sad, angry frown, before she took a deep breath and regained her composure. 

 

“But she has never hurt me,” Katya continued. “Or anybody I know. What you saw in the snow, we were playing! She loves to play.  If she wanted to hurt me, she would have, and if she does… Well, that will be how it goes.” She smiled down at Brian, and he smiled back somehow. She was so calm, made it seem so  _ normal.  _

 

“But you passing out was understandable. You wouldn’t wake, so I decided to take you home.”

 

“Did you carry me?”

 

Katya giggled and shook her head. “No. Sofiya did!” 

 

Brian remembered how he felt like the ground was moving and breathing and nodded solemnly to himself. 

 

“Now, this is no horror movie,” Katya continued flatly. “You can go back to where you came from, or the hospital, or wherever. I will drive you. I would have done so but… well, Sofiya could not carry you into town.” 

 

Brian laughed and sat up a little more, biting his bottom lip as his ankle protested. “No, I mean—I don’t think I oughta leave  _ now,”  _ he said. “Unless… did you look at my ankle?”

 

Katya nodded, bringing her slim fingers to the afghans and uncovering it. Brian craned his neck to look and saw that his ankle had swollen up drastically, and probably looked pretty bruised underneath his sock.  

 

“It’s just a sprain,” Katya hummed. She grazed her fingers over the injury and Brian inhaled through his teeth. Her sharp gray eyes looked back at him warmly. “Hurts, yes? I bet. But it’s not serious. I have had worse, and with ice and plenty of rest, you will be just fine in a week or so.”

 

“That’s good,” Brian mumbled. The tender way Katya was looking at him and his wound made his face warm. “I don’t mean to impose, I’m sure you have a lot to do…”

 

“No, no!” Katya said, moving her hand to rest on his calf and patting it. Her crow’s feet and wrinkles brought themselves to the forefront as she grinned. 

“Not at all! I would not kick you out—it would not be Christian of me—but I also would enjoy the company.” She smiled gently and he felt like he was melting. 

 

“I’m sure you have a wife and children to return to,” she said quietly. She was running her finger around the rim of her mug, staring into it. “Are you all on vacation?”

 

“No, it’s just me.”

 

Katya blinked, confused. “They did not want to come?”

 

“No, I don’t—“ Brian coughed. “I don’t  _ have _ a wife and kids.” He felt a little insecure, not just because a beautiful woman was staring him down, but because he felt like his gap was closing anyway. 

 

“I see,” Katya murmured, thinking. “I do not either, and I am forty-two! Goodness.” She demurely cupped her chin with one bony hand and rubbed at her pink cheeks. “Sofiya is the only girl in my life. But it is not sad! She is like a baby to me, I suppose.” 

 

Brian wanted nothing but to reassure Katya and make sure she wasn’t sad, and she did not even sound upset—just bittersweet. He took her hand and cupped it between both his own, engulfing it in her petiteness. 

 

“I can’t wait to meet her.” He hoped he sounded sincere, because he was. Katya’s eyes glistened, and her red lips drew back into a delighted, eager smile. 

 

“Me, either!” She cried. “Oh, she is a sweetheart. She will love you. She did not complain once about carrying you! My sweetest  _ malishka.”  _ Katya’s face was lit up with the look of a mother, maternal and proud. She was glowing. 

 

She hummed and brought her fingers to fiddle with her earring. The long sleeve of her blouse slipped down slightly, and Brian could see a tiny rose tattooed on the bone that jutted so dramatically from her wrist. He wanted to kiss it. 

 

“I like your lipstick,” he said absently, eyes still fixated on her wrist. Katya blinked and touched her bottom lip with the back of her thumb. 

 

“You do?” she asked. “I normally never wear it, but since I had a guest…” 

 

“You don’t have to do that,” Brian assured. “I mean, you didn’t catch me at my best, that’s for sure.”

 

Katya giggled. “You should see the hunters that I come across. Sofiya is more handsome.” She laughed again at her joke before taking Brian’s hand and examining his fingers.

 

“I noticed your hand was hurt,” she offered, blunt but impossibly gentle, and her voice was more healing to them than the bandages were. “Both of them.”

 

Brian looked at her sheepishly, nodding, and she began tracing her fingernail along the wrinkles on his palm. He shivered. “What bad boy gets himself into so much trouble, so far from home, all the way in Siberia?” she cooed. 

 

Brian’s stomach flipped, but he just shrugged and scratched his other hand over the stubble on his scalp. “If only you knew.”

 

Katya sighed, smirking and set his hand back down gingerly. “I guess I’ll find out, since you’re stuck here with a crazy lady!” 

 

“It’s an honor.”

 

Katya quirked up an eyebrow and smirked. “Don’t be funny,” she said, and Brian didn’t quite know what she meant. “I have to start dinner. It’s a vegetable soup my  _ babushka _ would make when I was sick.” 

 

“Can I help?”

 

Katya grinned and nodded. “You can peel the vegetables,” she said after a moment of thinking. “As long as you don’t hurt yourself!”

 

“I won’t,” he said with a returning, goofy grin before saluting her. “Scout’s honor, sarge.”

 

Katya sighed and shook her head. “You are a little strange, Brian.”

  
_ I could say the same,  _ Brian was going to respond, but he remained silent as Katya bent down to kiss both of his cheeks before standing and floating back to the kitchen. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @trixiesgum!
> 
> this fic's title and also general concept is inspired by the song Bit By Bit by Mother Mother. listen to it!
> 
> also big thankies to tarot for supporting this fic. u rule


End file.
